A central office typically includes a single manual optical patch panel for managing connections between fiber cables coming into the central office and the routing devices within the central office. If the optical patch panel fails, the central office may become inoperable.
Moreover, repair of damaged fibers in a central office implementing a single manual patch panel is a labor intensive process. The repair process often involves sending repair personnel to the central offices at both ends of the damaged fiber. The repair personnel identify the location of the damaged fiber in the manual optical patch panel and then manually connect the damaged fiber to a test device, such as an optical time domain reflectometer, to determine the location of the damage along the fiber. Once the location is identified, a splice crew is sent to the location to repair the damaged fiber. After the fiber has been repaired, the repair personnel at the two central offices remeasure the fiber with the optical time domain reflectometer to determine whether the fiber has been properly repaired. If the fiber has been repaired, the repair personnel manually reconnect the fiber back to its original location in the manual patch panel. This repair process is not only labor intensive, but also prone to errors (e.g., a repair person may mistakenly put the fiber back into a different location in the manual patch panel).